Friday, July 24, 2015

At breakfast, my wife and I were talking about the recent killing of four Marines and one Sailor in Chatannooga Tennessee and the shooting last night in a theater in Lafayette, Louisiana. She mentioned that with Obama's directives that our military aren't allowed to carry firearms on base, that he was making our military into soft targets for terrorists. She speculated that he is trying to arrange things to create a culture of fear and anger.

That got us talking and thinking. What is to be gained by inciting the average American to fear and anger?

The fear part seems clear to me.

Obama's former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel is credited with giving voice to the horrifyingly crass idea that politicians should, "never let a serious crisis go to waste." This remark is so notorious that it has now been labeled "Rahms Rule." And it means that

"Major crises can provide cover for distributing benefits to targeted special interest groups. The greater the magnitude of a given crisis and the shorter the interval for forming legislation to deal with it, the larger the spread of pork that can be packed into the final legislation."

It is a very short step from using crises for political gain to creating crises in order to leverage them for political gain. Of course, creating crises means that the one taking advantage of the crises must appear blameless in causing the crises. Which is one of the reasons why plausible deniability is so important to politicians.

Getting the American people whipped up into a state of fear makes them more willing to accept tighter limits on their freedoms "to keep them safe." Don't believe me?

Consider the fact that when you want to fly these days, you willingly submit to x-ray scans and body searches that are more universal and intrusive than the targeted "stop and frisk" program that caused such outrage over invasions of privacy and public humiliation in New York City.

Glen Beck wrote a novel that explained this principle of using crisis to change our view of what is acceptable in fairly large increments. His book, The Overton Window, was a fun read, but I am afraid too many readers may have enjoyed the story so much that they missed the prime point he was making. I hope I am wrong on that last point.

The anti-Second Amendment crowd has relentlessly used crises such as the Sandy Hook school shooting, the SC Church shooting and now the Lafayette Theater shooting as rallying cries for greater restrictions on gun ownership. They certainly won't let any crisis go to waste in their unrelenting campaign to transform us from citizens into subjects by disarming us first piecemeal and then wholesale.

The angry part is less clear to me, and much more dangerous to all concerned.

I guess the most logical way to use an angry American people is to get them to take the streets in violent protests. Such widespread violence, regardless of its direct cause, would provide an excuse to implement martial law and immediately suspend nearly all civil rights. Then, we could, almost in an instant be transformed from a Representative Republic into a dictatorship. After all, with widespread unrest, we couldn't be expected to be able to hold elections, right? So, we would have to continue with the crowd we have until things are settled enough (by the standards of those in power) to hold elections again.

And what would have to occur before things are "settled" enough? Likely that would entail the suppression and elimination of those elements in society deemed as destabilizing. In other words, all those opposed to the current power elite.

Under this state of fear and anger, troops would be authorized and used to actively attack groups and individuals all over the country until everyone finally got the message that you better toe the party line, or risk being named an enemy of the state and either killed or imprisoned.

By the time the majority of the people realized they had been hoodwinked, it would be too late to do anything about it unless they were willing to see lots of people die to change things. All your guns would, at the least be registered, and the worst they would already be confiscated. And peaceful and passive forms of resistance and opposition would be handled with the same level of ferocity and violence accorded those "subversive" actors who the military had been called in to put down.

It is instructive to note that "the shot heard 'round the world" at Concord and Lexington was fired when the "federal" government of England moved to confiscate the guns and ammunition of the civilly authorized militia. The English Generals and Governors recognized that if their subjects retained their arms and ammunition, they could not be easily forced into compliance with laws dictated by a monarch and his parliament that were increasingly arbitrary and hostile to the best interests of the people.

I mentioned that the anger part is much more dangerous to all concerned.

What I am thinking of here is that while the people are angry, individuals and groups often do things that, in a more rational moment they would never consider. As was seen in the "Rodney King Riots" in LA and the more recent riots is Ferguson Missouri and the Baltimore Riots of 2015, a rampaging mob of people protesting violence against blacks is as likely to destroy black-owned businesses as they are to destroy those of whites or asians. The looters really don't care who owns what they are stealing. They just want to take things without paying for them, and then sell them for a 100% profit.

Mobocracy is both violent and mindless. Its creators aim it in the direction they want it to go, and then they work the edges to either take advantage of targets of opportunity, or to push the mob closer toward the ultimate target. Just to be clear here, when I speak of the creators of mobocracy, I am not usually referring to the people who actually started a rally or a march. Those folks are often innocent pawns of those who use the rally or march to start violence.

Blacks in this country historically should be most opposed to mobocracy. Mobocracy is what the KKK relies upon to achieve its ends. After all, two of the appealing aspects of being in a mob is strength in numbers and the anonymity of the crowd. Covering your face with a mask and then roaming the streets with a bunch of similarly masked people is the essence of public Klan action. It also marks the activities of many Anarchists. And, it is what was used to faciliate the lynching of countless blacks in the South right up through the Civil Rights era.

The issue here, for ordinary Americans, is to not allow the anger and fear of the moment, or even of the moments, to be used to drive you into supporting action that will ultimately turn you and the rising generation from citizens into subjects.

The Crisis Users like Rahm Emmanuel and his former boss, Barak Obama, and their allies jump on a crisis with both feet. They make public statements that are filled to the brim with emotion. They decry the tragedy and call for laws that will prevent such tragedies in the future. And the laws are never aimed at the root causes of the problem, rather, they are aimed at the leaves of the bush of evil and are calculated to reduce the freedoms of law-abiding citizens rather than actually punishing the wrong-doer.

What do I mean by leaves and roots? Renowned US author Henry David Thoreau is credited with saying that, "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." When politicians call for stricter gun laws in the wake of a shooting, they are functionally blaming the car for the deaths caused by a drunken driver.

Why would they make such a silly and egregious error as to blame a car for the actions of a drunk driver? Why would they blame guns for the actions of a deranged person? Clearly, there are only two reasons any reasonably intelligent person would blame an inanimate object for the actions of a person. Either 1) they believe that Stephen R King's horror story "Christine" about a car with a mind of its own was a true story rather than a novel and these inanimate objects are actually animated by some ancient spirit and we are about to be overrun by Killdozer. Or 2) they have a hidden agenda which involves restricting the access of law-abiding people to inanimate objects which they are lawfully entitled to have and use.

Why do I say they have a hidden agenda? Quite simply because they are not being open and honest about their motives. If they were, they would say things like, "there is no reason any person outside of the military or law enforcement need guns, so I want to take them away from everyone who is not using them for military or law enforcement as part of their job."

You won't find many (if any) politicians who will be this open about their objective, because they know that Obama was right when he said that Americans cling to their religion and their guns. Although he was totally wrong when he ascribed that behavior solely to folks who are bitter, unemployed, or racist. Americans cling to their religion because it has a proven track-record of keeping this country from becoming as self-serving as the nations of Europe. And they cling to their guns because they know that responsibility for feeding the family and protecting the family ultimately rest with the family, not with the police or any other arm of the government.

So, now that another lunatic crashed a car into a store trying to kill people, don't let the politicians and mainstream media brainwash you into accepting the hare-brained notion that banning cars will keep lunatics from killing. Oh, excuse me, rewrite the above and replace "crashed a car" with "used a gun" and replace "banning cars" with "banning guns." Other than that, the arguments are the same.

Don't let fear and anger take over. Instead, call, email, fax or write your elected officials in Washington, citing the news stories, and tell them to stand firm in defending the rights of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against gun wielding lunatics by doing away with legalized "soft targets" in the US.

After all, what crazy killer is going to go into a theater to shoot people, if he knows that half the folks there are carrying concealed and for every one round he sends downrange, he will see four or five coming right back at him?

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein.Visit Tom's Amazon.com Author's Page(c) Copyright 2015 A+ Results LLC. All Rights Reserved. Your comments are welcome... Please observe some ground rules. No profanity, vulgarity, or personal attacks. Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks not only betray a lack of vocabulary and imagination, they also are the hallmarks of bigotry, and bigotry is the hallmark of someone who is fundamentally insecure in their views. Facts are always welcome.

Subscribe To My God & Government

Disclaimer and Warning

This blog expresses My views on religion and politics, they are NOT the official views of any religious or political organization.

Feel free to comment. However, if you leave a comment, mind your manners. CIVIL discourse is the order of the day. That means no profanity or vulgarity and no personal attacks. If you want to insult someone here, you had better be very polite in how you do it, and not use any profanity or vulgarity in the process.

Profanity, vulgarity and personal attacks are the hallmarks of bigotry and bigotry is the hallmark of an intellectually insecure argument.